 Starring: John Wayne, Margeurite Churchill, El Brendel, Tyrone Power Sr.
Director: Raoul Walsh
Year Of Release: 1930
Plot: In the western pioneer era, scout Breck Coleman leads a band of settlers in covered wagons across the empty prairies of the US, fending off attacks from Indians, as well as dealing with the environment, from storms and swollen rivers to deserts and buffalo stampedes. |
The Big Trail is a significant film for several reasons. For a start the 1930 flick was one of the very first movies ever to be shot in widescreen (i.e. at an aspect ratio wider the 4:3). In fact the process, the 70mm Fox Grandeur, was so new that when the film came out, there were only two cinemas in the world, one in LA and one in New York, that had the projectors to show the movie in its (2.2:1 aspect ratio) widescreen version. You’d think this would have made using the 70mm process cost prohibitive, but they did it nonetheless, while filming a more standard 35mm, 4:3 aspect ratio version of the film at the same time to show in normal cinemas (they also simultaneously shot several foreign language versions, each with a different cast, as was common at the time).
Annoyingly though, while the 70mm version was carefully preserved in the early 1980s after nearly being lost completely (many considered the original negatives to be too degraded to be saved, but thanks to a mammoth effort by cinematographer Karl Malkames, the widescreen version was meticulously restored), in the UK we’ve only had the inferior 35mm version on DVD so far. However if you live in the States, a two-disc edition came out last year that features both the widescreen and fullscreen versions.
While The Big Trail was among the first widescreen movies, and was made at a time when the studios were vying to offer new ways to make movies that seemed bigger and more spectacular than ever before, the Great Depression meant all the competing widescreen processes of the late 20s and early 30s quickly died off. Cinemas couldn’t afford to upgrade to the new equipment, particularly since most had only just got over having to pay out for the different sound formats that had emerged in the late 20s, and so movie-goers had to wait until the 50s before widescreen re-emerged.
Although its widescreen credentials make The Big Trail important to film history in its own right, probably the most significant thing about it is that is marks John Wayne’s first starring role. In fact without The Big Trail we wouldn’t have known the name John Wayne at all. The 23-year-when actor was so fresh at the time that he’d only had a single credited role before got the lead in The Big Trail. However when he scored the part in the epic western, the studio quickly decided his birth name, Marion Morrison, was not the name of a leading man (in his only previous credited role, he went by the name Duke Morrison). Fox chief Winfield Sheehan and Big Trail director Raoul Walsh discussed what to call Marion, rejected Anthony Wayne and then settled on John Wayne. The actor himself wasn’t even consulted about his new name and just had to accept it.
When we now think of John Wayne, it tends to be as the increasingly grizzled, middle-aged man that he was in his films of the 50s and 60s. As a result it’s almost shocking to see that in his earliest roles he was chosen for his matinee idol looks and physique. He was an incredibly good-looking guy in his youth, and it was certainly this rather than his acting skills that gave him his first taste of fame in The Big Trail. Wayne gives a rather stilted performance in the film, where it almost feels like he’s reading off cue cards. That said, while he later honed his skills, he never exactly had great range as an actor. It’s difficult to blame him for his charismatic but slightly wooden turn in The Big Trail though, as sound was so new at the time that everybody was still getting used to the best way to speak on screen.
Wayne’s lack of finesse is unsurprising, as it’s not like he grew up with dreams of becoming an actor. He entered university as a teen on a sports scholarship and played American Football for USC (University of Southern California) in LA. While there he met silent film star Tom Mix, who got him a summer job in the prop department at Fox, in return for football tickets. After an injury forced him off the sports team, he lost his scholarship and had to quit the university. Wayne (or Morrison as he was at the time) then went to work for Fox full-time, mostly in the prop department but also getting a few uncredited bit parts in films, including several roles playing football alongside his former USC teammates.
Director Raoul Walsh then decided to give Wayne a shot at the big time by casting him in the lead role in The Big Trail. It was a truly epic production with massive set-pieces and a vast scope. Meticulously researched and filmed to try and make the best use of the widescreen process, it was the largest-scale western made up to that point, and had a huge influence on how later directors shot the wide-opened prairies.
Unfortunately though, partly due to the fact that it cost an awful lot to make both 70mm and 35mm versions of the film and few could actually watch the widescreen version, commercially it was a big flop. As a result, the 23-year-old Wayne was relegated to bit parts for the next few years. While he still got named roles, they were largely incidental, and his only starring parts came in very minor b-movies, such as the Three Mesquiteers series that he appeared in during the late-30s. He starred in around 80 westerns during the decade, but despite playing the lead in the massive production of The Big Trail, his career was pretty much stuck in a horse opera rut for most of the 30s.
Luckily for him, he struck up a strong friendship with director John Ford, who decided he could use Wayne’s good looks for the role of the dashing Ringo Kid in his 1939 western Stagecoach. The film was a huge success and from then on Wayne was a massive star right up until his death in 1976.
It’s odd that The Big Trail was so ahead of its time in so many areas. It used widescreen two decades before that took off, filmed the wide-open prairies in ways that wouldn’t become common until John Ford expanded the scope of the genre in the 40s, and cast John Wayne in his first lead role, eight years before anyone tried it again with 1939’s Stagecoach. It may not be a masterpiece, but it’s a fascinating film, and certainly deserves to have a better known place than it holds now in film history.
TIM ISAAC
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